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"The 
Black 
Man's 
Burden. 



By H. T. Johnson, D.D., Ph.D. 

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VJjjL. (Pa.- 

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The bequest of 

Daniel Murray, 

Washington, D. C« 

1925. 




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INTRODUCTION. 



The "Black Man's Burden" was delivered at my re- 
quest to a large and appreciative audience on the closing 
evening of my Nova Scotia Conference, in Halifax, 
August 21, 1899. For an hour the rapt attention ol the 
intelligent audience, punctuated with frequent outbursts 
of applause, was a sufficient testimonial to Dr. Johnson's 
mastery of the subject, and the occasion. The action of 
the audience in requesting its publication, after an 
unanimous vote of thanks to the lecturer, bespeak more 
for the value of the lecture than any word 1 may furth- 
er add. 

( )ne of the Bishops A. M. E. Church. 



PREFACE. 

The appearance of this lecture in its present form is 
due to the unanimous action of the audience in Hali- 
fax, Nova Scotia, before whom it was first delivered. 
By rising, unanimous vote it was Resolved That the lec- 
turer be tendered an expression of gratitude and appro- 
bation for his able, instructive, and valuable address on 
"The Black Man's Burden." In view of its wholesome 
truths and practical data, touching the history, achieve- 
ments and prospects of the colored people of America, 
it was a united request that the lecture be published 
and placed within the reach of thousands who could 
not be present to hear it. 



PILE ON THE BLACK .MAX'S BURDEN. 

Pile on the Black Man's Burden, 

'Tis nearest at your door, 
Why heed long bleeding Cuba 

Or dark Hawai's shore; 
Halt ye your fearless armies 

Which menace feeble folks, 
Who fight with clubs and arrows 

And brook your rifles' smoke. 

Pile on the Black Man's burden, 

His wail with laughter drown, 
You've sealed the Red Man's problem 

And now deal with the Brown. 
In vain you seek to end it 

With bullet, blood or death, 
Better by far defend it 

With honor's holy breath. 

Pile on the Black Man's Burden, 

His back is broad though sore, 
What though the weight oppress him, 

He's borne the like before, 
"V our Jim crow laws and customs, 

And fiendish midnight deed, 
Though winked at by the nation 

Will some day trouble breed. 

Pile on the Black Man's Burden, 

At length 'twill heaven pierce, 
Then on you or your children 

Will reign God's judgments fierce: 
Your battleships and armies 

May weaker ones appall, 
But God Almighty's justice 

They'll not disturb at all, 

By H. T. Johnson. 



"The Black Man's Burden." 

[Delivered in Halifax. N. S. Aug. 21, 1899.] 



Ladies and Gentlemen : 

c Jj|x selecting ''The Black Man's Burden" as our 
f*- topic, let it be understood that it is not our 
l|l purpose to don the mantle of a crape prophet or 
((I assume the role of a philosopher of disenchantment. 
The crabbed critics of other races, and the ca- 
lamity howlers of our own who constantly gloat 
over our misfortunes as a people, and who tell us that 
our condition is the result of an irreversible decree from 
heaven, seem not to know that "there's a divinity which 
shapes the end" of races and individuals alike, and that 
the law of natural selection or that of the survival of 
the fittest operate no less among the various race-mem- 
bers of the human family than in the various depart- 
ments of the mineral, vegetable and animal realms. 
The classic injunction "Know thyself," so current among 
the Greeks, was no less incumbent upon the individual 
than upon the national or racial unit which represent 
a larger scope of endeavor and possibilities both as re- 
lates to form and content as well. The raw material of 
intellectual and moral endowment embodied in intelli- 
gent humanity represent a range of possibilities extend- 



I he I'.I.m k Man' I'.urden. 



ing from savage sentiency to the exalted status oi heav- 
en crowned characters a little lower than the angels. 

That the child is father of the man is a universal tru- 
ism, but not more so than that the baby or interior race 
ol to-day may become the full-grown and superior peo- 
ple oi to-morrow. There is no royal road to greatness 
in the Life oi any man and the same rule holds good in 
the case oi all nations and race-varieties that have made 
any headway from the earliest recorded time to the 
present. If every man is the architect oi his own for- 
tune, every race is the maker oi its own destiny. A- a 
general thing those world-favored mortal- who enter 
into ready-made fortunes and who have no burden to 
carry hut that of pursuing lives ot expensive pleasure, 
either become hopeless bankrupts in health, or posses- 
sions, oi - -non find themselves exhausted drones in the 
great hive of human activity. The race basking in the 
splendor of its career has less to stimulate it to higher 
exertion than its humbler and perhaps despised neigh- 
bor race. who. though beginning in obscurity and en- 
countering adversity at every step, from the stimulus of 
it- own peculiar endowments and the incentive furnished 
by the enviable standard set by its boastful and dom- 
inant pioneer, may yet eclipse its proud record by more 
lustrous achievements and a more towering grandeur. 
1 1 is no more true that "every dog will have its day" than 
that every race has had its day or will have its day. If 
the Red man has flourished and pioneered the world, 
il the Yellow Man has played his part in the drama of 



The Black Man's Burden. 



nations, if the white man shakes the world beneath the 
tread of his masterly sway to-day, it stands to reason 
that the Black Man's inning is next in order and that 
his will be a winning game should he play well and 
truly Ills part. Let no race or individual of any race 
feel that the golden highway of excellence or pre-emi- 
nence is closed against him because of birth, habitat or 
environment, or because of race, color, or previous con- 
dition of servitude; for 

To all, the prize is open, 

But he alone will take it, 
Who says with Roman firmness 

I'll find a way or make it. 

The object of this lecture will be to consider the 
Black Man's Burden in a few of the shapes it has taken, 
not that we may magnify or gloat over them, but that 
under God we may see in them ministering angels to 
our advancement, and stepping-stones to higher bless- 
ings within our reach as a people. I shall first consider 
the subject in its historic setting, and note the teaching 
of the past with reference to the Black Man's Burden. 
The subject is susceptible of universal discussion, for 
the Black Man has a burden wherever you find him ; 
but on this occasion we shall consider it in the light of 
his origin, career and destiny on the American con- 
tinent. 

It is remarkable to note that while others sought to 
rid themselves of the burdens which fettered them in 
distant lands by seeking the asylum of this newly-found 
country, the Black Man came only to find the yoke of 



6 The Black Man's Uunlcn. 

oppression and weight of bondage more firmly riveted 
upon him. The Pilgrims who brought their Bibles with 
them, in the hope of enjoying in New England that 
religious liberty which they did not enjoy in the Mother 

Country, in their blind devotion to their own welfare 
failed to recognize in the less fortunate subjects of ad- 
versity, the same inherent love of justice, the same 
fondness for freedom in any form. In the introduction 
of slavery in the virgin country, by the Christians who 
fled from the lash of civil and religious persecution in 
England, the Church was dealt a blow and given a set- 
hack which has made it lame for centuries, and which 
will send it limping through ages to come. .Men like 
Garrison and Phillips, of anti-slavery fame, were not 
skeptics or atheists because they spurned connection with 
a church whose chief corner-stone was the dogma that 
slavery was a divine institution, or who. if it did not be- 
lieve it was right to barter in human flesh, yet signally 
failed to lift up its voice like a trumpet' against the 
monstrous wrong. 

With the form, character and contents of American 
slavery you are too familiar for me to dwell upon its 
harrowing and barbarous details. Perhaps you shrink 
from its ghostlike recollection with such intolerance that 
you would have its ghastly skeleton buried beyond 
resurrection forever. The echo of its driver's lash and 
bloodhound bays, the shrieks of broken-hearted mothers 
parted by the auctioneer's block from ties dearer than 
life and stronger than death, you would have hushed 



The Black Man's Burden. 



and cast into the sea of everlasting forgetf illness. Yea, 
you would have these and all the infernal relics of that 
creation of the lower pit killed from the consciousness 
of memory and buried, face downward — as the enthusi- 
astic brother prayed that the Devil would be, so that 
the more he scratched the deeper he'd get. But why 
forget the fact and teachings of this dark and bloody 
chapter in the history of the race? 

Turning from that dark chapter our eyes greet with 
gladness the dawn of that era of freedom described by 
the muse-inspired writer when: 

The African catches a gleam of light 

From his lair of a thousand years of night; 

And the long lost signet shines once more 

On his swarthy brow as in days of yore, 

And the red blood sweeps through his knotted veins ,< 

As he strides a man from his broken chains; 

Let none suppose that human clay 

Makes human night or human day, 

Or that God had his glorious hand defiled 

When he molded the form of his dusky child. 

Xo outside standard by his is applied, 

The standard of man is the standard inside, 

And all that he in his might has made, 

Blend together in beautiful light and shade, 

While the spirit it is and not the skin 

That makes the whole human race akin 

And in his loving and fatherly sight 

His children are neither black nor white. 

While we would not recall the sad experiences of the 
burden of slavery to gloat over them, let us thank 



The Black Man's Burden. 



heaven that the night oi that dark calamity is long 
overpast, that the mountains of that burden have been 
rolled away, and that we have advanced the journey of 
a generation upon the golden highway to race manhood 



and future grandeur 



The Black Man's Burden. 



BURDEX OF MORAL SHORTCOMINGS. 



As wretched as was the black man's condition, as to 
outward possessions, when he left the house of bondage, 
his moral condition was far more appalling. That he 
should have nothing and be nobody, was only to be 
expected as a result of that degrading experience which 
fettered his limbs and tended to brutalize his nature for 
ages. Those who indict the race for an exaggerated de- 
gree of moral defectiveness seem altogether too indiffer- 
ent to the facts of history and the verdict of logic 
touching the case. In the light of the hideous examples 
set, and the lessons taught him when he was told that 
his body belonged to his master, and that he had no 
soul, so far from being merely defective in his ethical 
make-up, the wonder is that he is in any wise less than 
a moral monstrosity, a hopeless leper in character. 
There was not a commandment that slavery did not 
wantonly break or teach the slave to violate. The first 
injunction of the decalogue forbade idolatry and en- 
joined worship of the true and living God. The slave 
master taught that his will was sovereign, made his 
servants call him master and yield willing obedience to 
\his every whim and decree. The law from Mt. Sinai 
required observance of the Sabbath. It was a common 



io The Black Man's Burden. 

thing for the cotton, the rice, the cane and tobacco fields 
controlled by slavery to be under the -way oi labor on 
the Lord'- day. The institution or sacrament of mat- 
rimony was an inseparable plank in the Mosaic statutes 
and was ordained of heaven. The bond oi holy wed- 
lock was not a part of the creed oi slavery, since its 
chief concernment was the fruitfulness of the slave and 
the profit resulting from his labors. From a system 
which practically denied the mandates of a sovereign 
moral ruler, that broke the Sabbath, that ignored the 
fourth commandment and treated the seventh com- 
mandment with universal contempt, there could he hut 
little expected in the way of moral outcome. 



The Black Man's Burden. 



THE BURDEN OF POVERTY. 



In his escape from the house of bondage, the first ob- 
stacle which confronted the Black Man in his march to 
the highway of manhood was the burden of widespread 
poverty. The nation that he enriched by centuries oi 
self-sacrificing servitude and helped to perpetuate by his 
blood in every foreign and domestic straggle, only 
mocked his destitution in promissory notes by which he 
was to be entitled to forty fabulous acres and some 
mythical mule. Whatever might have been the fond 
hopes he cherished to the national aid or the smile of for- 
tune to cheer him toward freedom's height in any wav, 
he soon undeceived himself and realized the fact 
he was to be the maker of his own fortune and the 
carver of his own destiny. Having been accustomed to 
dependence upon his owner for where he slept, 
and for what he ate and wore, it was thought that he 
would not know how to use his freedom, and that lie 
would soon die from idleness and hunger. This ill 
prophecy was of course ventured long before he was 
credited with the sagacity that might lead him to grati- 
fy his appetite from some neighboring storehouse or 
some inviting poultry roost. In estimating that there 
would not be enough poor-houses to hold his kind, the 



rden. 

• • prophet ol tin- Black .Man seemed to have entire- 
ly overlooked the facl their subject is peculiarly a crea- 
. idence and can survive almost any conceiv- 
idition. They did not know thai there was a 
to the slave's experience altogether excluded from 
the view ol those outside. Thecaseof Uncle Remus is 
it illustration of the truth in point. 
Tin- story of our evolution as a ''arc from a state of 
lecades ago to that ot our present mater- 
ial welfare carries with it the charms oi romance and 
tin- int. mre-footed history as well. Think of it! 

le from the few thousands which stood to the credit 
by it- Iree members throughout the country, 
thirty years ago we were bul little better of in earthly 
m than the proverbial "Job's turkey." 
The census of 1890 gives striking evidence of the 
improved condition ot our people in the South. In 
1 there were 12,960,152 homes and farms in the 
I nited Si and of this number 1,186,174 are occu- 

pied by pure blacks and 224,502 by mulattoes. < M* the 
\ n their homes or farms and 978,558 
rent them. < >i the mulattoes 56,(571 own and 167, 

I he percent mortgaged property owned b} 

mly 10.71, while the personage of mortg i 
proj ili- w hole country i- 38.97. < >t the prop- 

held l>;. \ - per cent, is owned without 

imbran 

In the \"i-th Atlantic States there are 5,808 hon 
an. I • »wned by Negroes free from mortgage, and 



The Black Man's Burden. 13 



3,921 that are mortgage; in the South Atlantic States 
there are 107,084 homes and farms owned by Negroes 
free from incumbrance, and 8,03*2 that are mortgaged; 
in the North Central States there are 20,0(30 homes and 
farms owned by Negroes free from incumbrance, and 
9,601 that are mortgaged; in the South Central States 
there are 100,591 homes and farms owned by Negroes 
free from incumbrance, and 7,608 that are mortgaged; 
in the Western States there are 1,204 homes and farms 
owned by free Negroes, and 298 that are mortgaged. In 
the whole country there are 234.747 homes and farms 
owned by Negroes free from incumbrance, and 29,541 
that are mortgaged. In the South the percentage of 
home-owners is larger than in the North, and the pro- 
portion of these owners on farms of their own is larger 
than that of those who have homes in cities and villages. 
Among the eleven million Negroes of the United 
States and Territories, there is real estate and property 
owned to the following amounts according to the census 
of 1890: 

Alabama 9,200,125 

Oregon 85,000 

Connecticut^ 500,155 

Delaware 1,200,179 

North Dakota f6,459 

Florida 7,900,041) 

Utah 75,00o 

Iowa 12,500,372 

Chicago alone... 2,500,000 

Indiana 4,004,113 

Kentucky , 5,900,000 

Maine 175,211 

Missouri 0,600.340 

Minnesota.. 1,100,230 



i \ The Bla< k Man's Burden. 

Montana 120,1 

New York 17,400,756 

North Carolina 11, Old 652 

Nevada 25o',000 

Arkansas 3,108,315 

California 4, Out', 209 

Colorado 3,100,472 

District of Columbia 5,300,033 

South Dakota...' 175 225 

Georgia 10,415,330 

Indian Territory 600 000 

Illinois 8,300*51 1 

Kansas 3 900 222 

Louisiana 18^10o|528 

Mississippi i:i, 100,213 

Marj land 9,900,735 

Michigan 4,800,000 

New Jersey 3,300,185 

N> .v Hampshire 300 125 

New Mexico. 200,000 

Nebraska 2,500,000 

Massachusetts 9 004 122 

Rhode Island 3,400^000 

South Carolina 12,000 000 

Tennessee 10,400*211 

West Virginia 5,608,721 

Virginia 4,900,000 

Ohio 7,900,325 

Pennsylvania 15,300,648 

T, ' Xil> Is. HI 0,545 

Vermont 1.100,371 

Washington 575,000 

Wyoming 231,115 

The total amount oi church property owned by Ne- 
groes in the United States is $16,310,441. The totaJ 
amount oi property owned by them is $263,000,000. 



The Black Man's Burden. 15 



THE BURDEN OF ILLITERACY. 



However weighty or numerous the other burdens 
slavery may have entailed upon the Black Man, the 
burden of intellectual blindness was the most grievious 
of all. There was but one direction in which his man- 
hood was allowed to develope and assert itself, and 
that was in the direction of animal vigor and robust- 
ness. He was schooled in a system which placed stress 
upon the development of the muscle to the total neglect 
of the mind and its possible evolution. A good work- 
man, a good fighter, a tower of herculean strength he 
was encouraged to be, but a man of ideas, never! If he 
were a giant in body, the more covetable a prize was he 
on the auction-block in proportion as he betrayed him- 
self to be only a pigmy in mind. Let him be able to 
fell a mule with his fist or lift an ox on his shoulder 
and his master would place great stress upon his excel- 
lence and prowess. Not so if he were known to own a 
book, or could master the alphabet. In either case he 
was a worthless dangerous chattel and was legally de- 
serving of being physically dismembered or of being- 
sold out of harm's way to some more rigid region of en- 
slavement. Under such conditions, is it any wonder 
that freedom's dawn should find the Black Man an in- 



16 The Black Man's Burden. 

tellectual dwarf, a child as to mind, though a man in 
bodily organization. 

No wonder that he should have been caricatured as 
he winked his eyes to the light oi knowledge for the 
first time. They saw him (altering the hall of Learning 
with shuffling gait fresh from the haunts of ignorance. 
His clumsy movements they said suggested the pres- 
ence oi an elephant in a crockery shop. A.s he pored 
over the problems given in his arithmetic, his critics 
laughed, ha! ha!! ha!!! They said his skull was so 
thick that ii would be difficult 'for a tenpenny nail to 
dent it. much less for it to grapple with a "rule of three/' 
oi- conduct its subject across the labyrinthian stages of a 
pons assinorum. They were willing to occupy common 
grounds ol judgment with Ariel and Calhoun and say 
that the Black Man had no soul of intellect and that 
they would believe it when he was known to extract a 
square root in mathematics, or accurately pursue a 
Mi verb in all its hide and seek movements of Creek 
inflection. Crossing the Rubicon ol his own inexperi- 
ence and scaling the Alps of* his critics' prejudice and 
ill prophecies, the Black Man grappled manfully with 
the burden of intellectual blindness and the result is by 
|| ( » means to he laughed at. Let us note a tew tacts in 
connection with the consideration before us : 

In less than the first five years after emancipation, the 
illiteracy of the race was reduced to the extent that 
one-tenth of our people ten years of age and over could 
read and writ.'. In 1870, or five years after emaneipa- 



The Black Man's Burden. i 7 



tioii, the records of the census show that only 20 per 
cent, of us ten years and over could read and write. 
Ten years later, or 1880, the population had increased 
to 30 per cent. In 1800, only a generation after eman- 
cipation, forty-three out of every one hundred colored 
persons ten years of age and over were able to read and 
write. These figures show our rapid progress in the ac- 
quisition of elementary education. 

When we remember that in the three decades since 
freedom the colored race has reduced its illiteracy 35 
per cent., only the most sanguine hopes need be in- 
dulged as to the ability of the Black Man to bear his 
intellectual burden in the future. Those who doubt 
the ability of the race to take in the higher branches of 
learning or who insist that Negro education should be 
restricted to the elementary or industrial channel would 
do well to remember that there are 160 institutions 
of the race devoted to advanced learning; that 38,000 
Negro youths are in these institutions, and that 28,000 
Negro instructors are in charge of the mental and moral 
training of these youths. 

Our career and accomplishments in the republic of 
letters also score greatly to our credit in the direction of 
meeting the educational demands upon us. The Negro 
author is no longer a rarity, for our bookmakers are al- 
most as periodical as the days, and are as good, bad or 
indifferent as the capacity or caprice of their writers may 
elect to decree. Whether in the realm of the classics as 
a Scarborough, or in the world of romance and poetry as 



The Bla< k Man's Burden. 



a Dunbar, the geniua of the Negro as an investigator or 
entertainer ranks high and measures up to the standard 
of universal endorsement. 

Forty years ago had any one prophesied that the race 
would control an institution in a state whose Governor 
would stand side by side with the leading Negro oi the 
age, and be crowded with literary honors by that insti- 
tution, thai prophet would have been taken for a mad- 
man; and yet, such an unlikely occurrence has passed 
into history, and Wilberforce not only records the ( rov- 
ernor oi < mio, but the President oi the United States in 
the person 'ol Win. McKinley, as among its most hon- 
ored alumni. 



The Black Man's Burden. ig 



BURDEN OF RACE PREJUDICE. 



It would be well for us to allow charity to begin at 
home in the matter of considering the obstacles which 
retard our more rapid advancement. No one will 
doubt the wrong, the injustice, the inhumanities we suf- 
fer from others, but it were well for us to turn our eyes 
within our own ranks, and detect the presence of trait- 
ors who undermine and damage our stronghold more 
than the multitudinous adversaries seen and unseen that 
are without. There are many such internal foes, but 
there is one gigantic enemy which we would do well to 
arrest and expel as soon as possible. 

Race prejudice is the monstrous bane which ever re- 
tards our elevation, but it might be well to remember that 
race prejudice of black men against black men is just as 
heinous, and far more fatal than race prejudice of white 
men against black men. Some of you will, doubtless, 
be startled when I tell you that we keep our own selves 
down by this prejudice more than others are able to 
keep us down. Whether you believe it or not, the fact 
remains, and is confirmed by illustrations and demon- 
strations without number. You may say that our lack 
of faith in each other, our habit of opposing the wel- 
fare of one another, or of viewing our brother's pros- 
perity with an envious eye, is due to our ignorance o* 



The Filai k Man's Burden. 



the false teaching of centuries. I care not whether you 
impute the shortcomings to slavery, to lack of race pride, 
(o a failure to realize its disastrous results upon our 
present prosperity, or upon our posterity unborn, I want 
to warn the race that until we rid ourselves oi this sink- 
ing iniquity oi race prejudice against ourselves, there 
can be no permanent progress lor us in this land, nor in 
any othe] under the broad dome of the starry heavens 
anywhere. Whether this spirit is considered in the 
manv who seem happy in obstructing the pathway of 
those who endeavor to rise, or in the purse-proud color- 
phobia tendency oi the few who enjoy the smiles oi 
fortune, the danger is none the less serious to our future 
welfare as a people. 



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